The preciousness of life is something that can often be forgotten. Things come and go, seasons change, and in a modernistic culture the day can shift beneath our feet in a moment’s notice. In this modernizing world, the real question that comes...

Willa Cather has artistically crafted the ending of A Lost Lady so that Marian Forrester comes out a survivor rather than a lost lady as the title suggests. This use of irony is very important because it opens up questions about the nature of the...

In the words of Arthur Erickson, a Canadian author in the early 20th century, "Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within". This quote is referring to the figurative mask that people will put on to conceal their weaknesses, insecurities,...

Both Amy Tan and Willa Cather, in the books The Joy Luck Club and My Antonia, convey the challenges foreign immigrants undergo when attempting to assimilate to the new language and culture of America and the disconnect that forms as a result while...

After Jim moves to town with his grandparents, he begins school with other children of his age, yet is never interested in their antics or infatuations. His relationship with the Harling children next door, demonstrates the conventional mode of...

In My Antonia, the prairie, with its dogtowns, creeks, and grassy cliffs, is as prominent a force as Jim Burden or Antonia Shimerda, in that it becomes their home and playground in childhood and shapes their consciousness in adulthood. The...

According to Walter Benjamin’s “The Storyteller,” storytellers are a dying breed, and the novel only contributes to the death of storytelling. If that is true, then Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a fan fueling flames on the somber coals of...

Despite the trajectories and implications Jim Burden may have imposed upon the female characters of My Antonia, each of the “hired girls” winds up successful by their own means, simultaneously demonstrating and defying the stereotypical roles of...

“Optima dies… prima fugit,” (Virgil). This simple yet powerful statement is the quote chosen by Willa Cather to set the expectational theme for her 1918 novel My Ántonia. The classic adage translates to “the best days are the first to flee”,...

Dreams are usually experienced when a person is sleeping, but idealizations and memories can turn into dreams as well. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between dreams and reality, especially when thinking of the past. People may mistake what...

Throughout the novel My Ántonia by Willa Cather Jim is very emotionally absent. He does not have an easy life by any stretch of the imagination, yet his hardships are not evident in his speech or actions. They are not the driving force that molds...

Many authors have been inspired to write by their environments, beautifully rendering their scenery with their words. Willa Cather and Mary Austin are two examples of such authors, who recreate the vast expanses of the Midwest's grassy fields and...

Nature is a vital and powerful component of life. It has the power to provide, as well as the power to take away. Human life depends upon it, but can also be destroyed by it. We are forced to interact with it in numerous ways, but at the same time...

A famous princess held captive by a beast once sang in the Beauty and the Beast musical by Ashman and Menken, “Home should be where the heart is, and never were words so true.” This idea clues in a relevant truth that resonates throughout Willa...

The idea of developing from your experiences is an idea applied to the methods of writing as well as everyday life in the present day. Such a method is mostly applied to Naturalist works. The goal of Naturalist literature was solely to develop and...

My Ántonia by Willa Cather is a nostalgic look into the past that forces readers to feel as if they were a part of the story. Cather uses Jim Burdens voice to narrate how life during this time was viewed by someone who was a young innocent boy....

In Cather’s Nebraskan novel My Antonia, written in 1918, she touches on the ideals of freedom and opportunity that pervade American literature. In My Antonia some characters are given freedom and opportunity, fulfilling the mythical ‘American...

Pioneering, or the act of breaking new ground, is what has established the United States as the enormous international presence it is today. From ideals represented by manifest destiny, the Declaration of Independence, institutions such as...

Despite the trajectories and implications Jim Burden may have imposed upon the female characters of My Antonia, each of the “hired girls” winds up successful by their own means, simultaneously demonstrating and defying the stereotypical roles of...

Willa Cather’s 1913 novel O Pioneers! is very much a work of its time, providing social commentary regarding a number of significant issues of the nineteenth into early twentieth century. This commentary presents a variety of frameworks for...

Much as the often-flooding rivers of Mesopotamia shaped their cultural beliefs in demons punishing humanity and the open grasslands and calm weather of central Asia shaped the Mongols’ cultural beliefs in the afterlife being the eternal blue sky,...

Life is full of restrictions and rules that can often impede one’s personal pursuit of happiness. In O Pioneers!, Willa Cather, explores the idea of limitations. The characters in Cather’s novel are restricted to the Nebraska prairie, but seek a...

The 1920s is an era somewhat paradoxically described as an anachronistic one rife with social upheaval. Willa Cather's The Professor's House sheds light on this awkward time as she details the life of Godfrey St. Peter, an academic caught between...

Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop depicts the struggle of Father Latour and Father Vaillant to reestablish Catholic authority in their newly formed, New Mexican diocese. They are tasked with righting a territory that has backslid into...